


Don't R.I.P.

by yourlibrarian



Series: Reviews [15]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Meta, Reviews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 03:25:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6687253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look back at the series' strengths and weaknesses after its finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't R.I.P.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published July 25, 2007

While it's not my favorite show of all time, Queer as Folk was definitely a favorite. I bought the DVDs for no other reason than to show my support for this sort of programming. And I felt sorry at seeing it end, not just because I'll miss the show but because it seems like the end of an era. I have a hard time imagining a show like that being broadcast again (which is clearly alluded to in the last season, and certainly in the last ad campaign we see Brian work on). 

And I don't say that because it was a show focused on gay characters which showed a lot of nudity and sex. I can't imagine any other show on television today (including news shows) cursing the president, the right wingers, and a variety of institutions from liberal organizations to corporations. The show was ready to expose everyone's hypocrisy as well as the flaws and failures of their own culture. 

I know the show upset a number of people in the gay community, but I don't know all the arguments and, in any case, don't feel qualified to discuss that. I'll only say that one of the saving graces of the show was its willingness to make its characters flawed and often unpleasant at times. I have no more wish to see Mary Sues on screen than I do in fic.

Having said that, the show was not without its problems.

I often found the writing incredibly clunky. The soap-opera'ish nature (I was surprised to hear the creators object to that description) was redeemed only by its twist on the genre. Watching was like a game of "spot the cliched plot" and "see what criticism they're responding to this week." Situations and dialogue were often telegraphed, and it has serious TV-speed syndrome (things happening much more quickly and improbably than would ever be possible in real life). Reducing the seasons to only 13 episodes probably didn't help, as some arcs were more sketched out than explored. To me the greatest risk was that the characters might also sink to cliches or cardboard cutouts as a result of being so clearly puppeted.

But either because the writing did occasionally surprise or because the actors were (to varying degrees) able to do a bit more than what was on the page, it remained watchable. Even sometimes suspenseful. And funny.

My favorite characters by the end were probably Em and Justin. I liked Justin because I felt he could so easily have been a Mary Sue but the writers managed to give him some flaws and some attitude. I also think Randy Harrison managed to potray him with enough nuance that Justin had a core of maturity that overcame the melodramatic storylines. One of the reasons it was such fun to watch QaF was because it was like fanfic come to the screen (and not just because of the slash). The final season's manor in the country bit was so laughable that only the certainty that it couldn't end that way made it bearable. And things didn't always work out for the characters, in the course of the show or in the finale. But I think one of Randy's successes was that he made his character the perfect foil to Brian.

Em wasn't an early favorite because I thought he was one of characters most easily vulnerable to caricature. Not that he was generally played that way. But I grew to love the sweetness Peter Paige brought to Em, and the thought of the character's early years is pretty heartbreaking. I liked the way that it strengthened him though, giving him a core of integrity he demonstrated repeatedly. He was always clear headed in the end, however tempted he was to romanticize events in his life. Em and Justin seemed very human to me and I found the two actors the most natural in their portrayals. 

The other characters all had their moments when you adored them and others when you wanted to kick them from the room. I thought Brian had some of the best dialogue. His infallible self-confidence (he was arrogant too, but not falsely so) was a kick to watch. I loved his unapologetic and often misanthropic nature. But I found Brian grew less interesting to watch over time. Perhaps this is because he had few ways in which to develop, other than follow the cliche of bad boy turned good. And I thought Gale Harold one of the weakest of the actors. Maybe a different actor could have done more with Brian, I don't know. Although most of a character is in the writing, when you get the right actor match, that character can be really iconic. I always got the feeling (certainly emphasized in the finale) that Brian was written to be an iconic character but he didn't make it in my opinion. 

Which leads us to the other main character, Michael. (I liked how he narrated the final episode as he had the first). The problem is that I never connected with Michael's character. I think Hal Sparks managed to bring out Michael's basic good nature, but like Gale Harold, I thought he was also a weak actor in a pivotal role. Whereas with Gale I often felt I was getting nothing from the screen, with Hal it seemed as if he was cycling through the various parts of his repertoire. It probably didn't help that Michael's character was one I was the least likely to connect with on a personal level. 

By comparison, the similar character of Debbie was more fleshed out to me. Hers was also a character easily reduced to caricature, and in the early seasons Debbie often seemed that way to me. But whereas Debbie grew increasingly nuanced, Michael never went anywhere for me. And this considering that, in the last two seasons particularly, it became very clear how much he was her son. Debbie was given more flaws than ever and came out better for it. 

Speaking of which, I think one of the best scenes for her was also the only scene which finally gave me something from Ben. I thought that the Ben and Michael storyline was incredibly important to the show, yet Ben was largely a non-entity to me. Given he was an academic I thought I'd find him more interesting. I think Robert Gant probably had a thankless role because Ben was often a calm mediator in the Novotny tempests and stood in opposition to the biting Brian. The whole steroids storyline was also unfortunate. But it was the moment in the hospital when Ben tells Debbie to stop putting herself at the center of attention that I finally saw something interesting in Ben. I thought he played that wonderfully. Although he had plenty of quiet strength, it tended to make him disappear in the face of other in-your-face characters. In that hospital moment he was seen as the pillar of strength he was, as well as having strong opinions and clear views of those around him. 

Which brings me to Hunter and Horvath. Hunter never rang all that true to me as the troubled teen he was. I think the actor did a good job but I felt he didn’t have enough nuance to work with in the writing. I will, however, forever remember Hunter for the moment in which he fears that his medical condition and background will prevent him ever finding love. That rang terribly true, and despite Ben and Michael’s efforts to reassure there’s still no promise at the end that he’ll get to that goal anytime soon.

It was nice to see Debbie find love but I found Horvath’s turnaround from their initial introduction, unconvincing. He seemed too easily devoted to her. Loving Debbie Novotny could not be an easy situation for most men. I never learned enough about Carl to find out why he could do it given where he'd started as a character. 

Em may be the flamer but Ted was the drama queen. His portrayal was pretty consistent. His S5 switch from Mr. Low Self-Esteem to Mr. Successful was another casualty of those compressed arcs. But it’s good it happened because otherwise Ted’s character would have ended up pretty much where we first found him. In the opposite situation from Michael's, I felt this was more the fault of the writing than the actor, though there was a certain amount of repertoire cycling with him as well.

Mel and Lindsey do seem very much a pair, as Michael pointed out to them. Lindsey got more opportunity to develop than did Mel, whose storylines seemed to revolve around larger external issues. But it seems that most of their development was done as a unit. One thing I never really understood was how Lindsey and Brian had bonded. It seemed a great unspoken part of the backstory. Given the limited circle of people who Brian cared about, I thought this was an area that should have been developed for both their sakes.

There are various things I’ll miss from the show. For one, it was refreshing to see characters who talked about sex all the time. When you see it on other shows more often than not either it's a ratings thing, or somehow obligatory. It's never represented as being a part of people's lives, a part of their make-up, a part of how they think. Mind you, if every show was like that it would get old quickly. But other shows didn’t, and QaF did. And I’ll also miss the fantasy that was Babylon. It’s kind of soothing to think of the characters suspended in time in a disco snowglobe. It wasn’t always depicted as a utopia (Ted begging for help over a passed-out Blake springs to mind), but certainly the closing scene gave it its due. 

Dance, marry, argue, hug and protest on boys and girls!


End file.
